Power consumption and management is a design concern for developers of processors, digital devices, computer systems etc. In battery powered devices such as cellular phones, laptop computers, person digital assistants (PDAs), and other portable and handheld devices, power consumption may be a significant contributor to the length of time during which a device may operate before the device must either be recharged and/or connected to an alternate power source. As such, power consumption may significantly impact the utility of these devices.
In some computer systems and/or digital devices, power control may provide a binary power state wherein the first power state corresponds to an idle processor and the second power state corresponds to an active processor. However, the processor in a digital device, for example, may have a variety of active processing states with computational demands that require varying levels of power to support the processing state.
However, conventional power control methods may not consider differing power demands of the processor. As such, depending on the computational requirements of the processor, a device may be consuming power in excess of that required to perform the computational tasks and/or functions of the processor.